[nostrademons]

Well yes, but the gaming industry is all about exploiting psychological efficiencies to take your money. Big Tech (in its advertising/retail/OS forms) is all about exploiting psychological inefficiencies to help other people take your money, and then taking a cut of it.

[klik99]

If you mean "gaming industry" meaning gambling machines, then yes. If you mean "games industry" as in video games then it's just not true that it's "all about exploiting psychological inefficiencies". There are many monetization strategies that are not exploitative that are common and even dominate in the market. Ubisoft, DLC, or Candy Crush freemium models are not representative of the whole industry.

[nostrademons]

AAA games with one-time payments are still exploiting psychological inefficiencies; there is a reason why we are evolutionarily hard-wired to pay attention to fast-moving visual settings where action is required from us.

For those who say "but I like to play video games" - yes, that's the point. Day traders like to speculate, and gamblers like to go to the casino. Your downside is capped with one-time payments, but a gambler who goes into the casino with a $20 and no other money also has a capped downside.

[zeroonetwothree]

Arguing that one-time payments with up-front pricing are exploitative is pretty silly. That's the basis for the entire economy since we invented money thousands of years ago. If it's exploitative then you're basically lumping all economic transactions into the same bucket, which makes it fairly meaningless.

[jcelerier]

> That's the basis for the entire economy

this close to getting it

[sshnuke]

so gaming addiction is also a silly argument?

[klik99]

Unless you're selling me living in a cave foraging for nuts and berries, you're trying to exploit some psychological inefficiencies.

I do get what you're saying, but if you take it this far then literally everything sold is considered exploiting inefficacies, psychological or biological, and it's kind of a useless statement in the context of comparing markets, only useful as part of an overall critique of capitalism.

All I meant was the games industry gets a very bad rap for being dopamine driven skinner box design and it simply isn't true, and being in the industry for 15+ years I have met very few people who are comfortable exploiting psychological effects for gain. If I was in a different part of the industry I probably would have met a lot of people who ARE comfortable with that. It is there. But it is far from "running solely on" that attitude.